The government wants to “quickly” test 300,000 children per week through saliva tests in schools. The objective was decreed by Jean Castex, the Prime Minister, on Thursday.
The idea is to break the chains of Covid-19 contamination in schools.
The High Health Authority gave the green light on February 11 to these tests for people without symptoms. The government wants to deploy them as a priority in nursery and elementary schools.
Less invasive than PCR
Saliva tests have the advantage of being less unpleasant than “classic” PCRs which require the introduction of a swab into the nose: only the saliva will be recovered, by spitting in a bottle or, in the most cases. small, via an eyedropper under the tongue.
These tests, which will be organized randomly and repeated, or in areas where the virus circulates a lot, should make it possible to strengthen the Covid-19 screening policy and break the chains of contamination as quickly as possible.
According to the Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, “between 50,000 and 80,000” tests were to be carried out this week. For example, in the five departments of the former Aquitaine, nearly 2,500 saliva tests are planned in two days in fifteen schools.
Tests by whom? How? ‘Or’ What ? The unions denounce the “vagueness”
These ambitious goals leave the unions doubtful. “We are in favor of these tests but nothing seems to have been anticipated for their implementation on the ground”, criticizes Ghislaine David, general secretary of Snuipp-FSU, the first primary union.
Many questions remain unanswered for the moment, she said. How are they going to be carried out? By who ? The Ministry of Education explains that laboratory staff will be present during the first sampling operation.
“In certain departments, the teaching teams would be called upon to contribute after an express ‘training’ delivered by a laboratory staff”, affirms the Snuipp-FSU, denouncing an “umpteenth DIY”.
“We do not know what will weigh on our shoulders, we are in the dark”, also worries Saphia Guereschi, general secretary of SNICS-FSU, the majority union of nurses of national education. The 7,400 school nurses, who are assigned to 62,000 school sites, are already struggling to fulfill their usual missions, she recalls.
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Failure of antigen tests
The saliva tests are intended to complement the antigenic tests which continue to be deployed in middle and high schools. However “the ministry does not seem to have learned the lessons of the failure of the campaign of the antigenic tests”, regrets Sophie Vénétitay, of Snes-FSU, first union of the secondary.
“There was no pedagogy around these tests, an absence of general mobilization of health actors,” she adds, fearing the same scenario with saliva tests.
The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, had announced the ambitious objective of testing up to a million students and staff per month. Some “200,000 antigenic tests” have in fact been carried out, according to the latest count from the Ministry of Education in mid-February, which has not specified since when, reports Ms. Vénétitay.
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